See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/231982959

Political Science as a Vocation

Article in PS Political Science & Politics · April 2009

DOI: 10.1017/S1049096509090489

CITATIONS READS
41 3,684

1 author:

Robert Keohane
Princeton University
138 PUBLICATIONS 34,557 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Robert Keohane on 10 February 2015.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 PSC 42(2) 09-048 1/5 02/10/09 12:51 am Page :1

.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

THE PROFESSION
.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Political Science as a Vocation

Robert O. Keohane, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University

This lecture was presented at the University of Sheffield on October 22, 2008, inaugurat-
ing the Graduate School of Politics; and at Oxford University on October 16, 2008. I have
retained the lecture style for this publication, only making minor changes and additions in
the text.

A
bout 90 years ago, at the end of World War I, Max Following Virginia Woolf, many of you probably noticed that
Weber gave two now-famous lectures, published except for Judith Shklar, this is a “procession” of men. Fortu-
in English as “Science as a Vocation” and “Politics nately, however, this lamentable situation has changed. Had I
as a Vocation.” They well repay reading and listed contemporary political scientists of note I would have had
re-reading. Thinking of those lectures, it seemed to include Elinor Ostrom, Theda Skocpol, Margaret Levi, and
appropriate, on this occasion, to reflect on “Political Science as a Suzanne Rudolph, as well as many younger women who are now
Vocation.” As the title of my lecture indicates, I am directing my leaders in our profession. Although exclusion on gender and racial
comments principally to the graduate students in attendance here, lines was long a reality, our profession is now increasingly open
who are beginning careers in our field. After the lecture, I want to to talented people from a wide variety of backgrounds.
hear about your reasons for becoming political scientists, and your What, then, is “political science”? I have an economist col-
aspirations. In the lecture, I will reflect on our vocation from the league who likes to say that any discipline with science in its name
vantage point of someone who has been a practicing political is not really a science—that it protests too much. Were one to
scientist—teaching, reflecting, and writing about politics—for 43 adopt a narrow view of science, as requiring mathematical formu-
years. lations of its propositions, precise quantitative testing, or even
I begin by pointing out that, viewed historically, you are in dis- experimental validation, political science would indeed be an oxy-
tinguished company. Aristotle was probably the first systematic moron. But today I will defend our nomenclature by taking a
Western political scientist, theorizing the relationship of politics broader view.
to other spheres of life and creating a typology of regimes—what I define politics as involving attempts to organize human groups
we would now call comparative politics. Machiavelli not only to determine internal rules and, externally, to compete and coop-
advised the prince but sought to analyze the nature of leadership, erate with other organized groups; and reactions to such attempts.
the characteristic hypocrisy of political speech, and the sources of This definition is meant to encompass a range of activities from
republican greatness. Hobbes provided what is still one of the most the governance of a democracy such as Great Britain to warfare,
compelling discussions of the causes of political violence and the from corporate takeovers to decisions made in the UN Security
sources of, and justification for, the state. Montesquieu and Mad- Council. It includes acts of leadership and resistance to leader-
ison developed a durable theory of constitutionalism, andToqueville ship, behavior resulting from deference and from defiance. I define
put forward insights into the nature of democracy that remain science as a publicly known set of procedures designed to make and
vibrant today—for example, in the work of Robert Putnam. I have evaluate descriptive and causal inferences on the basis of the self-
already mentioned Max Weber. In the generation of political sci- conscious application of methods that are themselves subject to
entists born in the first three decades of this century I would list, public evaluation. All science is carried out with the understand-
somewhat arbitrarily, Gabriel Almond, Robert Dahl, Judith Shklar, ing that any conclusions are uncertain and subject to revision or
and Kenneth Waltz—all of whom profoundly affected our knowl- refutation (King, Keohane, and Verba 1994, 7–9). Political science
edge of politics. Today, there are so many fine colleagues doing is the study of politics through the procedures of science.
insightful work that to mention a few would be to risk slighting
others whose work is equally important. The point is that you are TEACHING
joining a vibrant profession with a rich history. If I were conver-
Most of this lecture will be devoted to an explication of how, in
sant with classical Chinese and Indian sources, I could probably
my view, political science should be carried out: that is, the pro-
add to this list and extend this history even further into the past.
cesses of thinking and research that yield insights about politics.
Robert O. Keohane is professor of international affairs, Princeton University. He is the
But I want to begin by talking about teaching. Teaching is some-
author of After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Econ- times disparaged. Colleagues bargain to reduce their “teaching
omy (1984) and co-author of Designing Social Inquiry (1994). He won the Johan Skytte loads.” The language is revealing, since we speak of “research
Prize in Political Science, 2005. opportunities” but of “teaching loads.” National and global

doi:10.1017/S1049096509090489 PS • April 2009 1

PSC 42(2) 09-048 2/5 02/10/09 12:51 am Page :2

T h e Pro fe s s i o n : Po l i t i c a l S c i e n c e a s a Vo c a t i o n
.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

reputations are built principally on written work, not on teach- Puzzles

ing. But when we look around, we see that virtually all top-ranked Interesting work begins not just with a problem—how democracy
political scientists in the world today are active teachers. Few of works in the United States, for instance—but with a puzzle. Puz-
them have spent their careers at research institutes or think tanks. zles are anomalies: what we observe does not fit with our precon-
In my view, there is a reason for this. Teaching undergraduates ceptions based on established theory. Hobbes sought to make sense
compels one to put arguments into ordinary language, accessible of civil war and regicide. Toqueville wanted to understand how a
to undergraduates—and therefore to people who have not absorbed decentralized, individualistic society as the United States in the
the arcane language of social science. Teaching graduate students 1830s could exhibit such overall cohesion, and even suffer from
exposes one to new ideas from younger and more supple minds—as oppressive public opinion. Barrington Moore and a line of succes-
long as the students are sufficiently critical of the professor’s views. sors have sought to explain why some societies develop stable
I want to emphasize this point about criticism, because in my democracies while others do not; Theda Skocpol and others seek
experience, most students—but rarely the best—are too deferen- to account for great revolutions—and their absence. Great leaps
tial. In 1927, so the story goes, the chief justice of the United States, forward in political science often take place when someone sees
former president William Howard Taft, came to Yale Law School, puzzles, where others have only seen facts. The great philosopher
where his host was the chancellor of Yale Law School, Robert of science, Imre Lakatos, says that “science proceeds on a sea of
Maynard Hutchins, who was only 28 years old. Yale was then anomalies,” which certainly applies to political science.
seen as a radical place; Taft was a conservative. So the chief justice There is an implication for graduate students, and teachers, of
said to Chancellor Hutchins, “Well, I understand that at Yale you the importance of puzzles: never dismiss what appears to be a
teach your students that judges are fools.” To which Robert May- naïve question. This point was brought home to me when I was at
nard Hutchins replied, “No, Mr. Chief Justice, at Yale we teach Stanford in the 1970s, trying to understand economics better. I
our students to find that out for themselves.” Like the Yale stu- was not trained in economics but sought to pick it up on the fly,
dents, you need to discover for yourself which senior political sci- partly by attending economics seminars. I remember one such
entists are wise, and which are fools—by using your own critical seminar, by an eminent student of multinational corporations who
faculties. spoke very well, in a highly organized way. After about three min-
Teaching is rewarding in other ways. I have learned a lot from utes a young bearded man raised his hand to ask a question, which
my colleagues indirectly through students, who come to me with the speaker answered to my satisfaction. After three or four min-
insights, or works to read, suggested by other faculty members. utes the same hand went up, then again a few minutes later with
And over the long run, one may see former undergraduate stu- a different question, each seeming rather obvious to me. After
dents become politicians or even rise to high positions. A former three or four questions, I was getting annoyed: can’t you please let
student of mine just entered the United States Senate, and another the speaker proceed? But after five or six questions it dawned on
one is president of the World Bank. With former Ph.D. students me that the questioner was the only person in the room who really
ties are much stronger, since they remain in the profession. Two understood the topic: his apparently naïve questions had disman-
of my most valued colleagues and best friends at Princeton are tled the premises of the talk. I have forgotten everything else about
former students, including the chair of politics, Helen Milner, and the seminar, but I vividly remember the question from the back of
the eminent student of the European Union, Andrew Moravcsik. the room and the lesson: apparently naïve questions are often the
Former students of mine are scattered at colleges and universities most fundamental. So if you are puzzled, ask. In our field, there
around the United States, with some in Europe or Japan. In my are no dumb questions. If you ask a naïve question, 90% of
office I keep a shelf of books that began as Ph.D. dissertations the time you may just have missed the point, and you will get the
under my supervision. Paraphrasing Mark Twain: “It is good to benefit of being corrected. But 10% of the time, you may be the
do research. It is also good to advise others on how to do research— only person in the room to see the anomaly—to sense, like a good
and a lot less trouble.” detective, that there is something wrong about the story you are
Never disparage teaching. It is an intrinsic part of political being told. The rewards of identifying major puzzles, for the pro-
science as a vocation. Furthermore, it provides much more imme- fession and for yourself, are very large indeed.
diate gratification than research. When I am working on a major
project, I never know whether the results will be worthwhile. I
have left unpublished quite a bit of work, when I realized that the Conceptualization
premises or methods that I used were flawed. Sometimes even The next step is conceptualization: being clear about the meaning
one’s published work will be ignored. Like politics for Weber, of concepts. As Giovanni Sartori pointed out long ago, concepts
research can seem like the “long, hard boring of hard boards.” get “stretched” out of shape by political scientists seeking to do
The eventual rewards may be substantial or they may be meager; too much with too little (1970). And much often depends on def-
you never know until quite a bit later. If you give a good lecture or initions. How we think about the relationship between democ-
teach a lively, thoughtful seminar, however, the gratification is racy and liberty, for example, depends on how we conceptualize
immediate: you know you accomplished something that day. Dur- both key terms. Likewise, whether democracies ever fight one
ing periods of self-doubt, teaching can keep you going. another, or whether international institutions degrade or enhance
democracy, depends heavily on how we define democracy. Whether
THE SCIENCE IN POLITICAL SCIENCE civil wars are becoming more or less frequent may turn on how
I now turn to research, asking: what do political scientists do? we conceptualize what is a civil “war” rather than a lesser form of
What are the processes they go through in the search for knowl- civil conflict. And whether peace requires justice or is often in
edge? I will focus on four activities: puzzling, conceptualizing, conflict with it depends on how we define both of those contested
describing, and making causal inferences. terms.

2 PS • April 2009
 PSC 42(2) 09-048 3/5 02/10/09 12:51 am Page :3

.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

There are, in my view, no right or wrong definitions. But there 1,000 deaths is a large proportion of the active population, while
are explicit and implicit definitions, those consistent with ordi- others are undertaken by very large societies that suffer many
nary usage and those that are not. And authors can be consistent times more deaths in traffic accidents? Should all wars—from the
or inconsistent in their use of terms. At the conceptualization skirmish that took 1,100 lives to World War II—be counted equally?
stage, it is our obligation to put forward explicit definitions and to These are questions of validity that cannot be solved by quantifi-
seek to operationalize them consistently. The more our defini- cation, but for which one has to think hard about how one’s con-
tions conform to ordinary usage, furthermore, the less confusion ceptualization relates to the phenomena that can be measured.
is likely to result. Before we accept a descriptive inference, we need to have asked
questions about validity as well as reliability.
Description and Interpretation The issue of validity is highlighted by the famous philosophi-
The core of what most political scientists do, most of the time, is cal distinction between a wink and a twitch. As Clifford Geertz
descriptive inference. Inference means drawing more general con- writes, “the difference between a wink and a twitch is vast, as
clusions from established premises plus a particular set of facts. anyone unfortunate enough to have taken the first for the second
For example, from known facts—such as that each of 150 coun- knows” (1973). And, one might add, vice versa. If you see someone
tries has a particular form of government and particular eco- who is attractive to you moving her eyelids rapidly, you need to
nomic characteristics—we may infer that there is a correlation engage in interpretation before moving to a descriptive inference.
between wealth and democracy. Properly speaking, such a conclu- If you interpret the eye movement as a wink, you may infer: “she
sion rests on a chain of inferences—for instance, we may have loves me, too.” But woe to you if you act on that interpretation
inferred from a sample survey of tax returns what per capita GDP and it was only a twitch!
is for the country and from observation of three elections whether Political scientists engage in interpretation all the time. When
the country is democratically governed. These inferences are sub- states “reject” a public offer, as China and India were reported as
ject to error: people might systematically falsify their tax returns rejecting last summer’s recent G8 proposal on climate change, are
and the incumbent government might conceal decisive manipu- they really rejecting it, or simply establishing a bargaining posi-
lations from election monitors. Other examples of descriptive infer- tion?When the International Criminal Court indicts the president
ences in political science are the generalization that democracies of Sudan, is it seeking to bring him to justice or making a symbolic
do not fight one another, the claim that international institutions statement about Sudan’s behavior toward its own people? When
typically provide information to governments about other gov- Bill Clinton pointed out during the U.S. primaries last spring that
ernments’ compliance with rules, and Moravcsik’s claim that the many white people were hesitant to vote for a black man, was he
European Union was formed by leaders concerned more about simply reporting an unpleasant reality or appealing to racism?
economic gains than security benefits (1998). As the examples My point about descriptive inference is twofold. Descriptive
indicate, descriptive inferences can be generalizations about a wide inference is not the same as simple description: it involves an
set of cases, or statements about events at a particular time and inference, from known to unknown, that can be incorrect or other-
place. We can make inferences about individuals—for instance, wise flawed. And both description and descriptive inference often
the sincerity or hypocrisy of leaders or their perceptions of other rest on the interpretation of inherently—sometimes deliberately—
leaders’ behavior. We can also make inferences about the behav- ambiguous actions.
ior of collective actors that may have subunits pulling in different
directions: what “the United Kingdom” or “China” did in a par- Causal Inference
ticular situation, or whether “the United States,” or unauthorized Causality necessarily involves consideration of a counterfactual
individuals, engaged in torture at Abu Graib or Guantanamo. And situation. If Charles II had not been executed in 1649, would Great
we can make inferences about relationships. Were there back- Britain have a different political system now? If nuclear weapons
channel communications during the Cuban missile crisis between had not been invented, would the United States and the Soviet
the soviet ambassador and Robert M. Kennedy, and if so, what Union have fought World War III? If Hillary Rodham Clinton
were they about? Did NGOs and state representatives collaborate had planned beyond Super Tuesday, February 5, would she have
in leaking information about the OECD negotiations 10 years ago won the Democratic nomination for president? If the United States
about multilateral rules for investments? and Great Britain had occupied Iraq with twice as many troops,
Often political scientists seek to make their descriptive infer- would the insurgency have been prevented? Since we cannot
ences more precise by attaching numbers to whatever process they observe what actually happened and what didn’t happen at the
are seeking to understand. Precision is certainly enhanced by num- same time, making causal inferences is extremely difficult.
bers that are both reliable and valid, so such activities are to be In experimental science the answer is to conduct experiments
encouraged. But it is important to understand the importance of in which only one feature is different—for instance, adding or not
both reliability and validity. Reliability essentially means that, adding a chemical to a solution—and observing how outcomes
using the criteria publicly employed, the number could be repli- differ. Experiments are the best way to make valid causal infer-
cated by an independent observer. If, by criteria defining wars as ences, and some of the most exciting work in political science
organized violence involving 1,000 or more deaths, one team of now involves experimentation, sometimes in conjunction with
observers finds 50 wars in a given period of time, another team, surveys. I expect the domains in which experiments yield new
using the same criteria, should also find 50 wars. Validity is dif- causal knowledge to expand as imaginative political scientists
ferent: it refers to whether the measurement used—in this case, explore the possibilities as well as the limitations of experimental
1,000 battle casualties—fairly reflects the underlying phenom- methods.
enon being discussed: that is, war. Are all conflicts involving 1,000 Unfortunately for science but perhaps fortunately for the
deaths wars, even if some take place in small societies, so that human race, political scientists cannot manipulate large-scale

PS • April 2009 3
PSC 42(2) 09-048 4/5 02/10/09 12:51 am Page :4

T h e Pro fe s s i o n : Po l i t i c a l S c i e n c e a s a Vo c a t i o n
.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

political phenomena, such as the outcomes of elections or the for instance, of election outcomes on the basis of economic
incidence of war, for their convenience—not that human subjects conditions—but even our best predictions are imperfect. For my
committees would let us even if we could do so! If we can find and own subject of international politics the situation is even worse,
measure many highly similar instances of the same action—for because it revolves around conscious strategies of reflective actors.
example, votes for Parliament or expressions of party preference I act as I do because I anticipate what you will do, but you, know-
in surveys—we may be able to make quite good causal inferences ing this, act differently than I expect, and I, in turn anticipating
through the use of statistics. But even then, our procedures may this, change my behavior. This is an infinite regress about which
contaminate our findings—for instance, people often make up no prediction can be made: one would have to know how many
answers to public opinion polls because they do not want to seem cycles the players would go through, but if this could be ascer-
ignorant, and they deliberately recall having voted for winning tained, smart players would learn it and go one step further.
candidates more than can actually have been the case.
More seriously, our inferences may be flawed because of omit- WHY CHOOSE POLITICAL SCIENCE AS A VOCATION?
ted variables—something else changed that we failed to measure, If causal inferences in our field, and prediction, are so intractable,
and this change, rather than the one on which we focused, may why choose political science as a vocation? My short answer is
explain what we want to understand. Or we can confront endo- that we study politics not because it is beautiful or easy to under-
geneity: what we stipulate as the effect is actually, in whole or stand, but because it is so important to all fields of human
part, the cause rather than vice versa. A recent article in the Amer- endeavor. I readily admit that I cannot prove that politics is impor-
ican Economic Review disputes even the long-held view of political tant. Weber, in “Science as a Vocation,” says that the presupposi-
scientists and economists that increasing wealth promotes democ- tion that something is “worth knowing” “cannot be proved by
racy. Daron Acemoglu and his colleagues believe that the correla- scientific methods. It can only be interpreted with reference to its
tion between wealth and democracy—which is very strong—does ultimate meaning” (2004, 18).
not suggest causality, because of omitted variables: other factors Without governance, as Hobbes said, life is “poor, nasty, brut-
correlated with wealth that are also correlated with democracy ish and short.” Democracy is in my view immensely better than
(Acemoglu et al. 2008). None of our sacred cows is immune to autocracy, much less tyranny; but “making democracy work” is
criticism! hard and imposing it from the outside seems close to impossible
Furthermore, anticipation of consequences may create false (Putnam 1993). Peace, economic development, health, and ecolog-
impressions of causality. States may comply with international ical sustainability all depend on political institutions and on polit-
law not because they have incentives to follow it, or believe they ical decisions, and often on leadership. If the state fails or gets
are obliged to do so, but because they have carefully agreed only involved in wars that involve high levels of violence on its own
to rules with which they intended in any event to comply. Con- territory, creative activity in virtually every field except weapons
versely, real causality may be obscured. Political scientists seek- development is likely to be stymied. Without a vibrant political
ing to determine the effect of deterrence threats in international science, leaders would be guided only by their limited personal
crises did not find any significant effects. Critics, however, pointed experiences, historical analogies, and folk wisdom—all highly
out that states that would submit to deterrent threats should have unreliable as a basis for inference.
anticipated the threats, and their submission, and therefore not We should therefore judge our work, in my view, not accord-
have stimulated crises in the first place. The difficulties of causal ing to some idealization of science, or by the standards of the
inference seem endless. As many of you know, social scientists physical and biological sciences. Unlike Newtonian physics, we
have worked out ingenious responses to all of these problems, cannot properly aspire to knowledge of grand covering laws that
and continue to do so; but all of these responses are imperfect, explain a myriad of disparate events. Instead, we should ask
relying on uncertain inferences. They are responses, not solutions. whether knowing the political science literature on a given topic
Making causal inferences is the “Holy Grail” of political sci- has prepared us better to anticipate what could happen and assign
ence, but with respect to large-scale events involving strategic inter- probabilities to these various scenarios. Are the results superior
actions we are not very good at it—not because we are stupid, but to historical analogies, extrapolation from the very recent past,
because of inherent difficulties. Causal inferences are particularly and common sense? The answer is not always affirmative, but
difficult in international politics, where each major event seems there are enough phenomena that we understand better because
to have multiple contributing causes and to be sufficiently differ- of the work of political scientists—from the operation of democ-
ent from other events of the same name that aggregation is prob- racies to the operation of international institutions, from the exer-
lematic. There was only one French Revolution and only one World cise of various forms of power to the incidence of civil war—that
War I. However important it may have been, the Orange Revolu- we can be proud, within limits, of our profession.
tion in the Ukraine was not very similar to the French Revolu- But I said at the outset of this lecture that my audience is prin-
tion, nor can the Iraq War be closely matched with World War I. cipally the graduate students assembled here, and that you should
Furthermore, events separated in historical time not only have be critical of your elders. Although you are learning to build on
different contexts—technological, political, social, economic, and previous work, I hope you are dissatisfied with the accomplish-
ecological—they are affected by knowledge of earlier events. So ments of earlier generations, and skeptical about many of their
any methods that require independence are jeopardized. inferences. I also hope that you see puzzling anomalies in some of
Aspirations to causal inference are often linked to hopes for the conventional wisdom—issues that need to be unpacked. And I
prediction. Our causal knowledge of gravity helps us to predict hope that you have objections to express to what I have said here
the movement of planets and other celestial objects, and our causal today.
knowledge of biology and, increasingly, genetics helps us to pre- Many of you will have noticed that my sources and examples
dict the incidence of disease. Sometimes we can make predictions— come almost entirely from Europe and the United States, and

4 PS • April 2009
 PSC 42(2) 09-048 5/5 02/10/09 12:51 am Page :5

.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

from international politics, which has been dominated for five our students and readers, and we should not apologize for mak-
centuries by Europe and its offshoots. There is a sort of parochi- ing value-laden choices even as we seek to search unflinchingly
alism, therefore, about the way I have presented this subject. This for the truth, as unpleasant or unpopular as that may be. So I
parochialism is presumably due in some measure to my own lim- hope you will consult your values, as well as the literature, in decid-
itations, but it also reflects the discipline, which is heavily Amer- ing what to work on.
ican and to some extent European, with relatively few genuinely In conclusion, let me express the hope that you—the new gen-
important independent contributions from scholars on other con- eration of political scientists—will see openings where we see clo-
tinents. As the economic and political centers of gravity shift away sure, and that you will have ideas about how to move through
from Europe and the United States—as we move into the “post- those openings to the insights that lie behind them. There are
American era” as Fareed Zakaria calls it—this is bound to change. surely productive new interpretations to offer, and new descrip-
Political science will become a global discipline. It will, however, tive and causal discoveries to be made. You may already be formu-
only prosper if liberal democracy thrives. If we do our job, we lating some of these new views. The continuing vitality of our
political scientists will be irritating to political leaders, since we discipline depends, as it always has, on the critical imagination,
illuminate their deliberate obscurities and deceptions, we point conceptual boldness, and intellectual rigor of successive cohorts
to alternative policies that could be followed, we question their of newly trained scientists. The best of these political scientists
motivations and dissect the operations of organizations that sup- will have learned theory, method, and much empirical knowledge
port them and governments over which they preside. They will from their predecessors—but will also have learned to question
try to buy us off or, failing that, if not prevented from doing so, to what they have learned. 䡲
shut us up. As a result, we have a symbiotic relationship with
democracy. We can only thrive when democracy flourishes, and
REFERENCES
democracy—in a smaller way—needs us, if only as a small voice of
Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson, James A. Robinson, and Pierre Yared. 2008.
dispassionate reason. American Economic Review 98 (3): 808–42.
Our symbiotic relationship to democracy means that political
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. An Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.
science cannot be value-neutral. Nor can we be neutral with respect
King, Gary, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba. 1994. Designing Social Inquiry.
to order vs. chaos, war vs. peace. In our particular investigations Princeton: Princeton University Press.
we need to seek objectivity—a goal that is never realized but that
Moravcsik, Andrew M. 1998. The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power
we should strive for—because otherwise people with other prefer- from Messina to Maastricht. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
ences, or who do not know what our values are, will have no rea-
Putnam, Robert D. 1993. Making Democracy Work. Princeton: Princeton University
son to take our findings seriously. In the absence of a serious culture Press.
of objectivity, no cumulative increases in knowledge can take place.
Sartori, Giovanni. 1970. “Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics.” Ameri-
But the overall enterprise should never be value-neutral. We should can Political Science Review 64 (December): 1033–53.
choose normatively important problems because we care about Weber, Max. 2004. Science as a Vocation. Trans. Rodney Livingstone. Indianapolis:
improving human behavior, we should explain these choices to Hackett Publishing Co. (Orig. pub. 1917.)

PS • April 2009 5
View publication stats